The Gimbal

This Gimbal is about 14″ x 14″ x 1.5″ and is made out of 3/4″ plywood. You will have to cut this CamBam file out twice because you will need two of everything. Also, this is designed to be cut out with a 1/4″ router bit.

In the picture below, you can see the parts laid out. Notice how there are grooves cut into the plywood.

It is starting to come together in the picture below this text. As you can see, there are threaded rods inserted into the grooves. The grooves in the outer ring that are adjacent to the grooves in the center piece of plywood were made slightly larger with a chisel so that the threaded rod would be able to turn easily. The grooves in the center piece of plywood, however, were left alone, and it required a hammer to insert them into it.

Note: The grooves that you see in the top and bottom of the picture should not be made larger with a chisel. Leave them small because they will hold the next set of threaded rods tight while the grooves in the outermost ring will be the ones that are made larger with a chisel. You could always just hold them in with wood glue though if you make a mistake.

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I forgot to take pictures while putting the rest of this Gimbal together. It doesn’t really matter though because it’s pretty easy to figure out. You can see that I added nuts to the threaded rods so that the individual sections of the Gimbal would be held center. You can also see that I added screws to hold the pieces of plywood together.

This picture shows the finished Gimbal. Notice how everything rotates around a single point at the center.

I’m using a 3/4″ threaded in the hole at the center to hold it up. Also, it is easiest to see in this picture how the two sets of plywood are sandwiched one on top of the other.